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A dark web drugs kingpin who was arrested last year when he arrived in the United States to compete in the World Beard and Mustache Championships has now been sentenced to 20 years in prison. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola sentenced 36-year-old French national Gal Vallerius, aka "OxyMonster," after pleading guilty to conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute controlled substances and conspiracy to launder money in June this year. According to a press release published by the U.S. Department of Justice, Vallerius was an administrator, senior moderator and vendor on Dream Market —one of the largest dark web marketplaces for illegal narcotics and drug paraphernalia. Launched in November 2013, Dream Market began operating on the TOR "dark web" network and was designed to make it easier for people to anonymously buy and sell illegal items and services in exchange for Bitcoin and other peer-to-peer cryptocurrencies. Vallerius initi

What if just receiving a video call on WhatsApp could hack your smartphone? This sounds filmy, but Google Project Zero security researcher Natalie Silvanovich found a critical vulnerability in WhatsApp messenger that could have allowed hackers to remotely take full control of your WhatsApp just by video calling you over the messaging app. The vulnerability is a memory heap overflow issue which is triggered when a user receives a specially crafted malformed RTP packet via a video call request, which results in the corruption error and crashing the WhatsApp mobile app. Since the vulnerability affect RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol) implementation of Whatsapp, the flaw affects Android and iOS apps, but not WhatsApp Web that relies on WebRTC for video calls. Silvanovich also published a proof-of-concept exploit, along with the instructions for reproducing the WhatsApp attack. Although the proof-of-concept published by Silvanovich only triggers memory corruption, another Go

It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

Microsoft has just released its latest monthly Patch Tuesday updates for October 2018, fixing a total of 49 security vulnerabilities in its products. This month's security updates address security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Edge Browser, Internet Explorer, MS Office, MS Office Services and Web Apps, ChakraCore, SQL Server Management Studio, and Exchange Server. Out of 49 flaws patched this month, 12 are rated as critical, 35 are rated as important, one moderate, and one is low in severity. Three of these vulnerabilities patched by the tech giant are listed as "publicly known" at the time of release, and one flaw is reported as being actively exploited in the wild. Windows Update Patches An Important Flaw Under Active Attack According to the Microsoft advisory , an undisclosed group of attackers is actively exploiting an important elevation of privilege vulnerability (CVE-2018-8453) in Microsoft Windows operating system to take full control over the targete

Adobe has released its monthly security updates to address a total of 11 vulnerabilities in Adobe Digital Editions, Framemaker, and Technical Communications Suite, of which four are rated critical and rest 7 are important in severity. Adobe has also released updated versions for Flash Player , but surprisingly this month the software received no security patch update. Also, none of the security vulnerabilities patched this month were either publicly disclosed or found being actively exploited in the wild. All four critical vulnerabilities, three classified as a "heap overflow" and one "Use after free," reside in Adobe Digital Editions , an ebook reader software program. Successful exploitation of all the four flaws could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the targeted system in the context of the current user. Besides this, Adobe Digital Editions also received security updates for four important "Out of bounds read" vulnerabilities

A few hours ago the company announced its "non-shocking" plans to shut down Google+ social media network following a "shocking" data breach incident. Now to prevent abuse and potential leakage of sensitive data to third-party app developers, Google has made several significant changes giving users more control over what type of data they choose to share with each app. The changes are part of Google's Project Strobe —a "root-and-branch" review of third-party developers access to Google account and Android device data and of its idea around apps' data access. Restricted Call Log and SMS Permissions for Apps Google announced some new changes to the way permissions are approved for Android apps to prevent abuse and potential leakage of sensitive call and text log data by third-party developers. While the apps are only supposed to request permission those are required for functioning properly, any Android app can ask permission to access y

Google is going to shut down its social media network Google+ after the company suffered a massive data breach that exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of Google Plus users to third-party developers. According to the tech giant, a security vulnerability in one of Google+'s People APIs allowed third-party developers to access data for more than 500,000 users, including their usernames, email addresses, occupation, date of birth, profile photos, and gender-related information. Since Google+ servers do not keep API logs for more than two weeks, the company cannot confirm the number of users impacted by the vulnerability. However, Google assured its users that the company found no evidence that any developer was aware of this bug, or that the profile data was misused by any of the 438 developers that could have had access. "However, we ran a detailed analysis over the two weeks prior to patching the bug, and from that analysis, the Profiles of up to 500,00

A known vulnerability in MikroTik routers is potentially far more dangerous than previously thought. A cybersecurity researcher from Tenable Research has released a new proof-of-concept (PoC) RCE attack for an old directory traversal vulnerability that was found and patched within a day of its discovery in April this year. The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2018-14847, was initially rated as medium in severity but should now be rated critical because the new hacking technique used against vulnerable MikroTik routers allows attackers to remotely execute code on affected devices and gain a root shell. The vulnerability impacts Winbox—a management component for administrators to set up their routers using a Web-based interface—and a Windows GUI application for the RouterOS software used by the MikroTik devices. The vulnerability allows "remote attackers to bypass authentication and read arbitrary files by modifying a request to change one byte related to a Session ID.&qu

Cybersecurity is one of the most dynamic and exciting fields in tech, combining cutting-edge information technology with crime fighting. It's also an industry in serious need of qualified professionals. Estimates show that there are over one million unfilled cybersecurity jobs. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment of information security analysts will grow 28 percent from 2016 to 2026, "much faster than the average for all occupations." This presents a massive opportunity for people looking to break into the industry. If you want to join the next generation of cybersecurity professionals, Springboard has done all of the research for you in building the Cybersecurity Career Track . Here's what you need to know: Key Roles in Cybersecurity First, we have to drill down to the different roles and specialties within cybersecurity so you know which might be the best fit for you. There are three broad categories of roles here, analysts, engineers and archite

An Irish national who helped run the now-defunct dark web marketplace Silk Road pleaded guilty on Friday to drug trafficking charges that carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Gary Davis , also known as Libertas, was one of the site administrators and forum moderators for Silk Road, then-largest underground marketplace on the Internet used by thousands of users to sell and buy drugs and other illegal goods and services. Silk Road went down after the law enforcement raided its servers in 2013 and arrested its founder Ross William Ulbricht , who has been sentenced to life in prison after being convicted on multiple counts related to the underground drug marketplace. The FBI also seized Bitcoins (worth about $33.6 million, at the time) from the website. Those Bitcoins were later sold in a series of auctions by the United States Marshals Service (USMS). According to a press release published by US Department of Justice, Davis helped the black market website "r

A media report today revealed details of a significant supply chain attack which appears to be one of the largest corporate espionage and hardware hacking programs from a nation-state. According to a lengthy report published today by Bloomberg, a tiny surveillance chip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, has been found hidden in the servers used by nearly 30 American companies, including Apple and Amazon. The malicious chips, which were not part of the original server motherboards designed by the U.S-based company Super Micro, had been inserted during the manufacturing process in China. The report, based on a 3-year-long top-secret investigation in the United States, claims that the Chinese government-affiliated groups managed to infiltrate the supply chain to install tiny surveillance chips to motherboards which ended up in servers deployed by U.S. military, U.S. intelligence agencies, and many U.S. companies like Apple and Amazon. "Apple made its discovery of suspi

Do you know what is the latest version of Wi-Fi? It's okay if you don't know. It is — Wi-Fi is 802.11ac. I am sure many of us can't answer this question immediately because the Wi-Fi technology doesn't have a traditional format of version numbers… at least until yesterday. The Wi-Fi Alliance—the group that manages the implementation of Wi-Fi—has today announced that the next version of WiFi standard, which is 802.11ax, will use a simpler naming scheme and will be called WiFi 6. Wi-Fi 6, based on the IEEE 802.11ax standard, will offer higher data rates, increased capacity, good performance—even in dense environments (such as stadiums or public venues) and improved power efficiency, making it perfect choice for smart home and IoT uses). Of course, the updated version names of all previous Wi-Fi standards will now be: 802.11b → Wi-Fi 1 802.11a → Wi-Fi 2 802.11g → Wi-Fi 3 802.11n → Wi-Fi 4, 802.11ac (current) → Wi-Fi 5 This new straightforward approach

The US-CERT has released a joint technical alert from the DHS, the FBI, and Treasury warning about a new ATM scheme being used by the prolific North Korean APT hacking group known as Hidden Cobra . Hidden Cobra, also known as Lazarus Group and Guardians of Peace, is believed to be backed by the North Korean government and has previously launched attacks against a number of media organizations, aerospace, financial and critical infrastructure sectors across the world. The group had also reportedly been associated with the WannaCry ransomware menace that last year shut down hospitals and big businesses worldwide, the SWIFT Banking attack in 2016, as well as the Sony Pictures hack in 2014. Now, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of the Treasury have released details about a new cyber attack, dubbed " FASTCash ," that Hidden Cobra has been using since at least 2016 to cash out ATMs by compromising the bank server. FASTCash Hack

When Facebook last weekend disclosed a massive data breach—that compromised access tokens for more than 50 million accounts —many feared that the stolen tokens could have been used to access other third-party services, including Instagram and Tinder, through Facebook login. Good news is that Facebook found no evidence "so far" that proves such claims. In a blog post published Tuesday, Facebook security VP Guy Rosen revealed that investigators "found no evidence" of hackers accessing third-party apps with its "Login with Facebook" feature. "We have now analyzed our logs for all third-party apps installed or logged in during the attack we discovered last week. That investigation has so far found no evidence that the attackers accessed any apps using Facebook Login," Rosen says. This does not mean that the stolen access tokens that had already been revoked by Facebook do not pose any threat to thousands of third-party services using Face

Google has made several new announcements for its Chrome Web Store that aims at making Chrome extensions more secure and transparent to its users. Over a couple of years, we have seen a significant rise in malicious extensions that appear to offer useful functionalities, while running hidden malicious scripts in the background without the user's knowledge. However, the best part is that Google is aware of the issues and has proactively been working to change the way its Chrome web browser handles extensions. Earlier this year, Google banned extensions using cryptocurrency mining scripts and then in June, the company also disabled inline installation of Chrome extensions completely. The company has also been using machine learning technologies to detect and block malicious extensions. To take a step further, Google announced Monday five major changes that give users more control over certain permissions, enforces security measures, as well as makes the ecosystem more t

Looking for a hack to bypass the passcode or screen lock on iPhones? Jose Rodriguez, an iPhone enthusiast, has discovered a passcode bypass vulnerability in Apple's new iOS version 12 that potentially allows an attacker to access photos and contacts, including phone numbers and emails, on a locked iPhone XS and other recent iPhone models. Rodriguez, who also discovered iPhone lock screen hacks in the past, has posted two videos (in Spanish) on his YouTube channel under the account name Videosdebarraquito demonstrating a complicated 37-step iPhone passcode bypass process. The iPhone authorization screen bypass flaw works on the latest iPhones, including the iPhone XS, running Apple's latest iOS 12 beta and iOS 12 operating systems. Video Demonstrations: Here's How to Bypass iPhone Passcode As you can watch in the video demonstrations, the iPhone hack works provided the attacker has physical access to the targeted iPhone that has Siri enabled and Face ID either disa

When you search for free movie download or watch free movies online, search engines serve you a long list of best free movie websites. But you need to beware, as most free movies files and free movie site could end you up into downloading links to nasty computer viruses. They could infect or, at worst case, take control over your computer. One more thing I have learned in these years is that most top torrent sites, including  Kickass Torrents and Pirate Bay , are illegal as they violate copyright laws. So, before downloading movies, make sure those movies are legal to download. But, there are hundreds of torrents available on the Internet, which are legal to download. We receive emails from our readers on a daily basis who ask for legal sites like Tubi TV to download free movies and TV series. The query is fair enough because it is no easy to get free streaming sites or free movie download websites without breaking laws. Best Free Movie Download Websites (Legally) So in

Chinese cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a widespread, ongoing malware campaign that has already hijacked over 100,000 home routers and modified their DNS settings to hack users with malicious web pages—especially if they visit banking sites—and steal their login credentials. Dubbed GhostDNS , the campaign has many similarities with the infamous DNSChanger malware that works by changing DNS server settings on an infected device, allowing attackers to route the users' internet traffic through malicious servers and steal sensitive data. According to a new report from cybersecurity firm Qihoo 360's NetLab, just like the regular DNSChanger campaign, GhostDNS scans for the IP addresses for routers that use weak or no password at all, accesses the routers' settings, and then changes the router's default DNS address to the one controlled by the attackers. GhostDNS System: List of Modules and Sub-Modules The GhostDNS system mainly includes four modules: